


And With Feathers in Her Wake

by Liara_90



Series: A Home of Sticks [8]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst and Feels, Canon Compliant, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, F/F, POV Female Character, POV Third Person, Pre-Canon, Rosebird Week 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 09:47:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20387707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liara_90/pseuds/Liara_90
Summary: Summer Rose is alone on Patch, five months pregnant, when a little bird drops by.This can be read as part of the series, or as a stand-alone.





	And With Feathers in Her Wake

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted, _sans titre_, [on my Tumblr](https://pvoberstein.tumblr.com/post/187130045918/rosebird-week-day-8-free-day) on August 19, 2019, for the final day of [Rosebird Week 2019](https://rose-bird-week.tumblr.com/).

* * *

Summer Rose was sitting in her comfy chair. The oversized, overstuffed one in her Patch Island abode, a blanket on her lap, and basking in the glow of the midafternoon sun. There was a book held loosely in her fingers, some trashy Great War adventure novel, though she hadn’t turned a page for several minutes, her mind having wandered elsewhere. She’d been distracted first by some motion within her womb - though the kicking had soon quieted - and then her attention had been drawn to the sounds of birdsong, audible through an open window. Summer couldn’t see them without getting up from her chair - something she had absolutely no intention of doing for the foreseeable future - but she could hear the flapping of wings, the faint scratching sound of a claw on the wooden window frame. It was a familiar noise.

Which was why she was not surprised in the slightest when Raven Branwen strolled into her living room.

“Hello, Rose,” Raven said, though her voice was somewhat muffled by her mask. That fierce, savage veil that Summer had so hated, that monster worn like armor. Raven seemed to remember she was wearing it a few seconds later, and she removed it from her face.

She looked tired.

“Hello, Raven,” Summer eventually replied, with a small smile. “Long time no see.” She spoke as softly as she smiled, as if not wanting to disturb the afternoon tranquility.

“Yeah…” Raven said, almost as quietly. She set her mask down on a low table, one covered with magazines and paperwork and an as-yet-unboxed breast pump. “I’ll say.”

Summer straightened up in her chair. “Tai just left to take Yang to a check-up in Vale, they’ll be back in a couple of hour-”

“-I know

Summer closed her mouth, and lowered her eyes. “Of course you do.”

The room was silent for several long seconds, neither woman knowing quite how to proceed. But it was Raven who broke the tension.

“You guys got rid of the couch,” she observed, gesturing with her thumb to where a new set of shelves had been installed.

“Oh, um, yes,” Summer replied, perking up slightly. “Tai thought the room looked more open this way.”

Raven nodded, approvingly. “He’s right. Plus, it was kind of a gross couch.”

“Mm. You two rescued it from a dumpster, if I recall correctly.”

Raven smiled. “Yup. _Lot_ of memories in that thing.”

Summer dog-eared the corner of her page, then fidgeted with the fold.

“You know we conceived Yang on that couch, right?” Raven added.

Summer tilted her head, and made an expression that was extraordinarily difficult to read. “I…. did not.”

She moved to stand up, but froze halfway through the motion, before carefully lowering herself back to her seat.

Raven frowned. “You okay, Summer?”

“Yes,” Summer replied, reaching for the cup of tea she’d left on an adjacent stool. “Morning sickness. Except it’s not just in the mornings.”

“Ah.” Raven’s own pregnancy had been almost blessedly uncomplicated, apart from a short spat of constipation.

“I thought it died down after the first trimester,” Summer continued, sipping her tea, “but I apparently drew the short straw.” She set the cup back down. “You didn’t get much nausea during your pregnancy, right?”

Raven nodded. “Only during fertilization.”

Summer cocked an eyebrow. “_Fertilization_?”

“Yeah. When Tai said he was going to ‘fill me up with his baby batter’.” Raven rolled her eyes.

Despite herself, Summer let out a short laugh, a crisp, clear note almost piercing in its purity. “I’m surprised you waited a whole year to dump him.”

Raven snorted. It felt a little weird to be joking about it, but at the same time, just a little cathartic. She’d missed this, this feeling of having people she could talk to about _anything_.

She began a slow perambulation around the room. Summer tracked her with her eyes, watching as Raven stared at the scattered knick-knacks and decorations, like a bored kid at the museum. Raven’s own mementos - the Grimm wood carvings, the ceremonial knives, the kitschy Atlas-in-a-snow globe souvenir - had all been boxed-up, tucked into a hard-to-reach corner of the basement. If Raven was nonplussed by her own erasure, she didn’t show it.

“How’s Tai?”

Summer set her book down. “You could ask him yourself, you know?” she replied, staring into Raven’s eyes.

Raven turned her head, as if suddenly captivated by the carpeting. Her face was expressionless, but Summer didn’t need expressions to understand her.

Maybe a minute passed. Summer let out a faint sigh, and let the question go unanswered. “What brings you back to Vale?”

Raven offered a weak smile. “What, I can’t just drop by and visit my old partner?”

Summer sniffled. “Of course, you can,” she replied. “You’re always welcome here, Raven. Always.”

For all the armor Raven wore, it was always useless against Summer Rose. Always. Raven rubbed the corner of her eye with her thumb. “Thanks. But I don’t want to impose on, on all…” she gestured broadly with her hands “…_this_.”

Summer shook her head. “You know it’s not too late, Raven. Yang’s too young to remember anything. And I know Tai would…” (she fumbled for a word, almost going with ‘_forgive’_) “… _forget_ all of this. We could even make something up for the Beacon crowd, if you like. Some ‘_family emergency’_ or ‘_secret mission’_ or…”

She petered off, seeing the sorrow in Raven’s eyes. “Don’t try to make me stay, Rose.”

Summer shook her head, sadly. “_Make you_, Raven Branwen? I couldn’t do that if I tried. None of us ever could.”

And then she paused, her face scrunching up in discomfort. Raven watched, almost spellbound, as Summer gently lifted the blanket off of herself, rubbing her belly. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes,” Summer answered, slowly opening her eyes. “She’s just… a little energetic.”

Raven cocked an eyebrow. “‘_She_’? I think I remember you saying if you had a kid, you’d want it to be a surprise.”

“I did,” Summer replied, exhaling through her nostrils. “But the sonographer has loose lips.”

“Oh.” Raven started scratching her arm, watching as Summer rearranged herself on the chair. “So Yang will have a little sister. Beats having a brother, I tell you.”

Summer smiled at the weak joke. “Have you been in touch with Qrow?”

The scratching stopped. “A couple of months ago, yeah,” Raven replied. “Still running errands for the old man,” she added, shaking her head as she did.

“How’s life with the tribe?” Summer followed-up, daring to broach what had been the Branwens’ biggest taboo.

Raven paused for a second, then dropped herself onto the floor, a few feet from Summer. She looked _exhausted_.

“Poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” Raven quipped back, with a wry grin. It was too quick a response, Summer could tell, one she must have had prepared beforehand. “We get by. Some days better than others.”

Summer swallowed. She could tell Raven was holding back from her, from the way she spoke deliberately, with carefully chosen words. A habit that had been slowly lost over her years at Beacon, but evidently found again.

“How did they hold together, without you or Qrow there all those years?”

It was the wrong question, Summer would realize in retrospect, causing Raven to snarl and her fists to clench and her features to contort into something almost as monstrous as her mask. “You wanna know, Summer? _Pretty fucking badly_. We’re maybe a _third _the size we were a few years ago, and that number’s getting smaller every month. Between the Grimm attacks and the Kingdoms trying to wipe out anything they can’t control, and the, and th-the…”

Raven rubbed her eyes with the back of her forearm. Summer blinked back tears of her own. “I’m sorry, Raven. I really am. I didn’t mean it like-”

“-like you were trying to keep me _here_?” Raven’s voice had risen to a shout, causing Summer to flinch. “I’m _sorry_, Summer. I really am. Do you think this is my idea of a happy fucking ending?” She began pacing back in forth, booted feet stomping on recently renovated floors. “Believe it or not I really _do_ want to be with you. And Tai. And Yang.” She stomped a foot, hard enough to rattle the windows. “But I can’t stay _here_. And nobody will come with me.”

The silence was almost deafening.

There it was. An abridged performance of the last two years of their lives - Summer’s and Tai’s and Raven’s and Qrow’s. Debating which had escalated into bickering, which had escalated into quarreling, then shouting, then fighting. Then nothing at all.

“That’s where the cards fucking fell, Summer. That’s just our shitty little destinies.”

Raven all but collapsed, dropping herself back to the floor with a _thud_, head in her hands.

“It’s almost funny, isn’t it?” Summer observed, after giving Raven a minute to herself. “I used to think I could convince anybody to see things my way, to take my side. To do what I thought was _right_. If I could just _talk_ to them long enough, make them _understand_. But that’s not the case, is it? When it’s not miscommunication or misunderstanding, but when we prioritize different things. When you decide-”

“-that I have more important things to do than play House with Tai,” Raven snapped.

The fingers of Summer’s hand curled inwards, as if she had barely avoided being bitten. But she waited a moment, watching as Raven seemed to deflate. “You just value protecting your tribe more than, more than…” she fidgeted “…and we value our lives, our _work_ in Vale too much to leave here.”

Raven sniffled. “You’re making the right call, you know. The tribe’s no place to raise a girl, not even mine.” She rubbed at her tear duct, as if trying to plug a dike. “Don’t ever let Tai second-guess that.”

“I won’t,” Summer agreed.

Raven let out what sounded like a sigh of relief. And then she pulled herself to her feet, brushing invisible dust off of her clothes and casting around for her mask.

“Would you… could you _not_ tell Tai I was here? I don’t want to complicate things.”

Summer shook her head softly. “I’m not going to lie to my husband, Raven.”

Raven winced. “Right. No, that’s fair. Only if he asks, then?”

Summer said nothing, but Raven took her silence as a possible acquiescence.

“I should go,” said Raven, gesturing towards the open window. “I’m sure the last thing you need is your husband’s ex dropping by.”

“You know that’s not who you are to me, Raven.”

Raven stood still for several seconds, but said nothing. She walked past Summer, hands resting on the window frame.

“I’ll see you around, Rose,” Raven lied.

“Goodbye, Raven.”

It was the last time the two would ever meet.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, feel free to connect with me on [reddit](https://www.reddit.com/user/pvoberstein/overview), [Tumblr](http://pvoberstein.tumblr.com/), [Goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/66323993-pvoberstein), or [MyAnimeList](https://myanimelist.net/profile/pvoberstein), where I use the pvoberstein username. You can learn (a little) more about me and my writing on [my About page](https://pvoberstein.tumblr.com/about).
> 
> Please feel free to leave any comments, thoughts, feedback, or headcanons in the comments. Criticism is the only way I’ll ever get better as a writer. This work did not have a proofreader or beta-editor, so please feel free to point out any typographical mistakes.
> 
> I found this one _really_ hard to title. I’m not sure if I love or hate what I settled on.


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